Since she couldn't find a suitable reason, Xiao Jiu could only pretend not to know. Fortunately, her body didn't react at all. Even after eating so many new things these days, she didn't have any allergic reactions. After she finished passing the residual color from the dragon fruit, she returned to normal, and her grandmother finally breathed a sigh of relief.
However, after that, she asked her brother to keep an eye on her and not let her eat anything indiscriminately.
But the little brother still has to go to school. After the National Day holiday, Xiao Jiu went to work in the fields with his grandparents and older sisters every day.
Before, she could help with the peanuts as they grew on the ground, but she couldn't help at all with harvesting corn, sesame, and soybeans. However, she could follow behind them and pick up the fallen kernels. Grandma was meticulous; she wouldn't leave her own field without checking it two or three times from beginning to end, for fear that someone else would pick them up.
So she felt even more tired than her older sisters who did heavy work during this season. She spent all day bent over searching in the fields. The key was that her grandmother was not deaf or blind and worked with great energy. As a result, she, who had the easiest job, felt embarrassed not to work. When she wanted to slack off, she would see how hard her grandmother worked and would unconsciously follow in her footsteps.
When they got home, she felt sorry for the old lady's back, so she had her lie on the bed and massaged her back with her little feet. Surprisingly, the massage felt quite comfortable. The old lady praised her granddaughter to everyone she met, saying that her granddaughter hadn't spoiled her in vain and that everyone knew how to care for her.
Grandpa got a little jealous. Xiaojiu was quite clever; during dinner, she picked up the egg from her own bowl and gave it to Grandpa.
She was still biting into shredded potatoes with a matter-of-fact expression: "Grandpa worked hard, Grandpa eats eggs. Xiaojiu doesn't work hard, Xiaojiu eats shredded potatoes. Shredded potatoes are so delicious. Sister's shredded potatoes are so delicious."
Look how tiring it is to be a person! She's so young and already knows how to please everyone in the family.
Xiao An looked around at this and that, wondering why everyone praised his sister but not him. After observing, he discovered Xiao Jiu's secret to being popular, so he tried to learn it, but he couldn't quite grasp the essence. He was reluctant to share the good food in his bowl with others, unlike Xiao Jiu, who was used to eating good things and didn't care at all. As the saying goes, out with the old, in with the new!
Moreover, she only has the opportunity to have a snack at night when her stomach is empty.
So Xiao An could never understand why Xiao Jiu was willing to share, while he himself, despite gritting his teeth, was still unwilling to share the good food with others. After all, it was given to him by others, and it wouldn't be right to share it with others, would it?
After the corn, soybeans, sesame seeds, and other crops were all harvested, the winter wheat was also planted after the whole family plowed, turned over, and leveled the land.
Then, the older brothers climbed up and down the jujube tree in the yard and used bamboo poles to knock down the fruit, collecting hundreds of pounds of jujubes into baskets and placing them in a cool, ventilated place to dry.
When most of the leaves have fallen from the tree, the persimmons on the tree are bare. The persimmons, which were initially greenish-yellow, gradually turn orange-yellow as time goes by. Grandma said that the persimmons don't need to be cared for yet, and can be picked when the time is right, so as to save the trouble of processing them.
Besides red dates and persimmons, it's time to move the winter melons and pumpkins growing in the corners and outside the house to the storage room, as the weather is getting colder every day. All the older pumpkins should be stored in the cellar.
The potatoes in the yard were harvested long ago. This year, we also harvested about ten purple-skinned potatoes. My grandma and sisters were very surprised when they saw them, but they haven't been able to bear to eat them yet. They said they would wait until the whole family was gathered before steaming them and tasting what they were like.
When Xiao Jiu puts on her sweater and thermal underwear, it's almost time to harvest the sweet potatoes.
First, my father took a sickle, coiled up the sweet potato vines, brought them home, and stuffed them into the warehouse and hay storage room in the backyard.
Then, using a shovel, pry the bulging area downwards and upwards to reveal the well-developed tubers underneath. They grow in large and small clusters, like the Calabash Brothers, one after another. This year's potatoes and peanuts are the same, but compared to sweet potatoes, they are nothing.
The land where they grow sweet potatoes is sandy soil, so it's very suitable for growing sweet potatoes, potatoes, and even soybeans and sesame. Anyway, the yields weren't high back then, so having a piece of land to grow them was already pretty good. Compared to other crops, the yields of sweet potatoes and potatoes were quite high.
So when they saw the big bulges in the sweet potato field, the grandparents were very happy and said, "Judging from the situation, the harvest should be good this year."
The sweet potatoes they grow here have both red and white flesh varieties. They are sweet, mealy, and delicious. When they get tired or thirsty, they can just sit down at the edge of the field, take a knife, clean the sweet potatoes they dug up, and then bite into them with a crunchy sound.
Some families shred the sweet potatoes right there in the field and dry them on the spot, making them easy to preserve.
Actually, dried sweet potatoes aren't very tasty, but these days, it's good enough to have something to eat, so who has the right to be picky? Just grate them on the spot, and after drying them, you can either store them directly or grind them into sweet potato flour. Or you can take them home, grate them into a paste, add water to extract sweet potato starch slurry, and after drying it, you'll have sweet potato starch.
Sweet potato starch can be used to make noodles, which is an essential food in the local winter.
The Tao family, like everyone else, not only made dried sweet potatoes, sweet potato flour, and sweet potato starch, but also stored up some misshapen melons and cracked dates, sweet potato puree, and the like to feed the pigs.
There are too many sweet potatoes for humans to eat, so we have to find a way to save some of the bad ones for the pigs. The ones for humans are selected and then carefully ground and dried.
When there is no food, people may have to eat sweet potatoes for all three meals a day. When people are hungry, even if they know that eating sweet potatoes will cause stomach acid and flatulence, they have no other choice.
After the corn is dried, it can be ground into corn grits. The outer husks are used to feed chickens and ducks. The residue that is sifted out is also used to feed chickens, ducks and geese. The corn grits are cooked until fragrant and delicious. When paired with sweet potato chunks, they taste sweet and soft. They are delicious, but cooking corn grits takes too much heat.
During the summer harvest, there is plenty of food and drink, and even more during the autumn harvest. People are busy in the fields and at home, because they have to take advantage of the good weather and the strong sun to dry everything that can be dried. Otherwise, when the weather gets cold and it is not stored properly, it will mold and spoil.
After all the grain has been harvested, a special person will come to weigh it, and then the grain will be handed over to the state based on these weights.
Every year at this time, there are a million things I can't bear to part with, it's like tearing off a piece of my own flesh. The worst part is that people only pick the good ones and don't want the bad ones.
Only then can they truly understand the feelings of the farmers when they were cultivating their land. No one had it easy, so understanding is everything!
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